MiniBB Review - Forum Features & Requirements

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Web Site MiniBB Website
Download MiniBB
Current version 2.4.1 (December 25, 2009).
Released under GPL License.
Price Free.

From MiniBB website :

Want to make your own discussion board? miniBB ( = mini bulletin board) is a free forum software, original PHP message board script, you can build online community on. Security, speed and stability - three S's of our conferencing software concepts.
Based on original technology, miniBB provides everything to make your web discussions fast, simple and attractive for visitors. First of all, it's a content- and support-oriented board.

Review Updates

  • January 20, 2010: Review update with version 2.4.1 of MiniBB.

Recommended Average Size of a Community

This chart represents the recommendation of an average community size hosted with MiniBB.

MiniBB
Community Size Average

Server & Clients Requirements

Server Requirements
Server Technology
The technology on which this forum software is based on.
PHP
Operating Systems
Systems supporting this software.
LinuxWindows XP
Web Servers
Web servers host the forum software.
  • Apache 1.3
  • Apache 2.0/2.2
  • Microsoft IIS
Languages
Development language.
  • PHP 4
  • PHP 5
Databases
Systems that store forum datas.
  • MySQL
Browsers & Clients Requirements
Compatible Browsers
List of compatible browsers.
Mozilla FirefoxInternet Explorer
Google ChromeOpera
Apple SafariKonqueror
Mozilla SeaMonkey
Required Plugins/Technologies
What the user needs exactly to use this forum correctly.
Javascript.
Languages supported by MiniBB.
Yes Yes.
Supported Languages:
Albanian Albanian Belarusian Belarusian
Bosnian Bosnian Bulgarian Bulgarian
Catalan Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)
Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Croatian
Czech Czech Danish Danish
Dutch Dutch Estonian Estonian
Finnish Finnish French French
Galician Galician Georgian Georgian
German German Greek Greek
Hebrew Hebrew Hungarian Hungarian
Indonesian Indonesian Italian Italian
Japanese Japanese Korean (South) Korean (South)
Kurdish Kurdish Latvian Latvian
Lithuanian Lithuanian Norwegian Norwegian
Persian Persian Polish Polish
Portuguese Portuguese Portuguese (Brazilian) Portuguese (Brazilian)
Romanian Romanian Russian Russian
Serbian Serbian Slovak Slovak
Slovene Slovene Spanish Spanish
Swedish Swedish Thai Thai
Turkish Turkish Ukrainian Ukrainian
Urdu Urdu Vietnamese Vietnamese

You could download additional Language Packs

Forum Threads & Posts

Forum Threads
Forum Style
General appearance of the topics.
Flat
Thread Icons
An icon that identifies the type of a topic.
No No
Forum Organization
Organize your forum with categories, sections,...
  • Forum Categories
  • Sub Sections
Topic Tags
Could topics be organized by tags?
- -
Sticky Threads
Sticky threads stay at top of a section or a forum.
No No
Spell Checking
Posts and topics are spelled checked with a dictionary.
- -
Related Threads
List additional topics that may be related to the current one.
- -
Detect Duplicate Threads
Duplicate Threads are detected before creation.
No No
Hidden Topics
Some topics are only accessible to a limited list of users.
No No
Posts
Message Editing Form
Details about the manner to post messages.
  • Rich Text Editor
  • Formatting Buttons
  • Preview Button
Emoticons Yes Yes
Attachments
Attach files (screenshot, archive,...) with a post.
Plugin Plugin Syntax Highlighting
Posted Source Code is formatted using colors.
No No
Image Attachment
How images can be attached and displayed in message posts.
No.
Post Editing Format
Markup Language (HTML, Wiki, BBCode,...).
  • Plain
  • BBCode
Post by Email
Post to a topic directly from your email box.
- -
Message Rating
Users can rate the quality of other users posts.
No No Message Quoting
Quoting a post helps readers understand who answers who.
Yes Yes
Announcements
Administrators can post announcements that are displayed everywhere in the forum. It is even more powerful than a pinned topic.
- -

Key Features & Additional Tools

Key Features
Bundled Softwares
Softwares that are also available with the forum.
  • Pictures Album Manager
Users List
List of all user accounts, to helps users searching their friends.
Plugin Plugin
Private Messages
Users can communicate using an internal messaging system.
Plugin Plugin Online Users List
List of actually connected users, in the forum home page, a dedicated topic,...
Plugin Plugin
Instant Messaging
Communicate in the forum like in other IM (Yahoo Messenger, Live Messenger, Google Talk,...)
No No RSS/Atom Syndication
New posts and threads available using aggregators Syndicate
RSS 2.0
Calendar Plugin Plugin Remote Control
Remote control from external softwares or websites.
No.
Poll Creation Plugin Plugin Friendly URLs
URLs are explicit and contains information about the topic (title, message,...). This is highly recommended for SEO purposes.
Plugin Plugin

As you can see, MiniBB works as a minimal container that could be extended using plugins. This explains that most classical features needs to be downloaded and installed separately, one by one.

It could be really hard and difficult for beginners, but, at least confers a perfect way to customize a bulletin board.

 
 
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